John Lennon and Paul McCartney are the most successful songwriting duo in the history of music. The success and influence they have had are unprecedented. The duo wrote twenty number one singles in the US, more than any artist in history. What makes that feat even more amazing is that they accomplished that in only eight years. The closest competition is Mariah Carey, who has taken more than 20 years to get 17 number one singles and she has hired multiple teams of songwriters to get the material to accomplish that. The success of the Beatles opened the door for the Rolling Stones and other UK bands to have success in the US.

The Beatles are more than simply a successful commercial band. They were the most creative band of their era and their creativity influenced multiple generations of musicians and songwriters to this day. Lennon and McCartney also write scores of avant-garde tracks, from Strawberry Fields Forever, to I Am The Walrus, to Tomorrow Never Knows, the Beatles opened up the possibilities of what music could be and paved the way for acts like Pink Floyd and David Bowie to change the definition of what popular music could be.